Little Black Book
by graceofgod
Summary: Some things are never meant to be seen. By anyone. S4 spoilery. One-shot.


_**A/N: This story was written for a great friend. Since she's the one who's done all the hand-holding, it seemed only fitting that her story was the first one posted here. This one's for you, hun! You know who you are...**_

**_Major spoilers for 4x10, more general for S4 up to that point._**

_Disclaimer: The only thing I own is a truly astonishing ability to forget to add disclaimers... All recognisable works belong to the awsome talent of Kripke and the creators of Supernatural._

_A/N 2: I've taken a fairly major liberty with this story. It assumes that Dean lies at a certain crucial point. For the record, I don't think he did, but it's essential to the story._

_~~LBB~~_

He was waiting for it. Had been waiting for hours, nails chewed to the bloody quick; the dingy, puke green carpet almost worn through where he'd paced it, back and forth and back and forth. He'd gone to the door so often he'd lost count, even been halfway down the block a couple times before the desperate need in his brother's eyes turned his steps back to the motel room.

'_I just need some time, Sam. Alone.'_

'_Alone with Jim, Jack and Jose, you mean.'_

_Dean had looked down at his boots, refused to meet Sam's angry stare as he shrugged too casually._

'_Yeah. Maybe. Just alone. Don't follow me, okay? I'll be fine.'_

Sam snorted quietly, still angry with his brother, with himself for letting the lie be believable. He shut his eyes, pinched the bridge of his nose for a moment against the headache that had been brewing ever since the door clicked softly shut. Pursing his lips, he looked down at the book in his lap where he sat tailor-style on his bed, turning another thick, brittle page, dusty with more years than he liked to think about and squinting at the text. His lips twitched as he mumbled his way through the translation, losing himself in words first written in a tongue ancient when Latin was young, because some screwed up druids' ramblings about seals and locks and gates and shadows was a better place to be lost than the emptiness lurking in his brother's eyes these days.

So even though he was waiting for it, he still jumped a mile when something _thump-scritch-thudded _against the door.

One hand shot to the gun tucked beneath his pillow, the other easing the dark-leather bound tome closed, carefully because he could never quite shake the scholarly side of his nature. He unfolded his legs, rolled smoothly off the mattress, taking the gun with him as it came again and he crossed the space between bed and door in three long strides, shifting and resettling his grip on the gun as he rested his other hand flat against the thin wood.

Leaning into it, he listened, already more than certain that he knew what made the noise, but held back by the innate caution that was as much a part of him as the scholar was.

His shoulders sagged, the hand clutching his gun falling limply to his side as he heard the muffled huff; irritation and exasperation clear even through the door.

"Dammit, Dean."

The whisper wasn't meant to carry, wasn't meant to be heard but the sounds on the other side of the door stilled, a weary sigh fading into silence. He took a moment, resting his forehead against the wood, flaking paint crumbling away, catching his absent gaze and pulling it tumbling to the floor with the specks of once-red gloss.

They looked like long-dried blood against the carpet.

Sam shut his eyes, reached up and fumbled with the handle; flipping the lock and stepping back to let the door swing open behind him as he walked reluctantly back to the bed. The smell of alcohol was sharp against his throat as he swallowed back the worry, the hesitant steps behind him all wrong.

He dropped back onto the bed, one foot tucked up against his thigh, careless and loose beneath the tension crawling under his skin and looked down at his hands as they stowed the Taurus under his pillow again. He chewed at his lip as he realised he couldn't remember when he'd started sleeping with a gun under his pillow.

Those too-slow, too-cautious steps followed him into the room, the door clicking shut quietly again and he wished for his brother's usually annoying habit of banging every door he went through shut, never quite loud enough to be a slam that he could complain about, but definitely louder than it needed to be.

Dean hadn't banged a door shut since he came back.

His fingers turned, fiddled restlessly with a loose thread on the hem of his jeans.

"Sam?"

He didn't hear what he should have heard, but then, there'd been so much pain in his brother's voice for so long now. Instead, he heard _'I got off that rack. God help me I got right off it and I started rippin' them apart. I lost count of how many souls.'_

He gnawed on the tender, raw spot on the inside of his cheek, tasted thin, watery blood as he bit down on the burn in his throat.

"Sammy?"

'_How I feel? This… inside me… I wish I couldn't feel anything, Sammy. I wish I couldn't feel a damn thing.'_

"Yeah."

"I, uh…"

The rough cough it broke into, followed by a rougher hiss brought his head up fast.

"Jesus, Dean! What the hell?"

He was on his feet whiplash fast, reeling a little from the up-down-up on too little sleep for too damn long as he strode over to stand in front of his brother. He caught at the older man's arm as Dean swayed, steadying him as he traced the line of bruising flowering purple and black, left to right, cheekbone to temple across his brother's face.

Dean flinched back as his fingers brushed over the gash over the bridge of his nose, the one that had leaked blood halfway to his navel.

"'S nuthin'."

"Like hell, Dean. Christ. Sit down."

The only protest he got was a short-lived scowl, smoothed out as soon as it creased the contusion. Heart thumping painfully at his ribs, Sam followed his brother to the table, detouring past the bags dumped in between the beds for the first aid kit. Catching the wince as Dean eased down into a chair, he added _cracked ribs _to the list in his head, peering at bleary green eyes, trying not to see the emptiness in them.

"Blurred vision? Nausea?"

"Check." The older man burped wetly, uncomfortably, clenching a fist hard enough against his lips to turn them white. "'n check."

Sam dug through the kit, dragged out alcohol and gauze, arnica and Tylenol, laying them out on the table in front of him. His own stomach flipped once at the smell of stale whiskey and smoke as he leant forward.

"What happened?"

Tipping the bottle against the gauze pad until he felt the chill of alcohol seep through to his fingers, then wrapping his free hand around the back of his brother's neck, swiping the pad as hard as he dared across the abraded skin and catching the flinch in his palm.

"Couple guys. Didn'…ah… didn't like it when the waitress told 'em to back the hell off."

Tossing the bloody pad to the floor, soaking another and repeating.

"And that had what, exactly, to do with you getting your ass kicked?"

He didn't need to ask, didn't want to know though he couldn't help but play the scene out in his head. He was just talking, offering the only comforts he could in the healing and the verbal contact, the hand still wrapped around the older man's neck catching each flinch and twitch offering more of a connection. He knew the moment his brother accepted it when Dean leant back into the touch, eyes dropping to the table and the supplies littered there.

"They hassled her."

_End of story._

He knew it was as simple as that for his brother, knew the hunter wouldn't even have thought before stepping in.

"How many is a couple? And how many chasers of Jack before that?"

"Three, I think. And… uh… dunno. Half dozen, maybe?"

Sam blinked, elbowed the Tylenol off the edge of the table. It landed in the kit with a rattle, and his brother sighed.

"Sorry dude. Not a good mix."

He tossed the third gauze to the floor, sat back a little, gestured at the battered hunter's shirts and watched Dean almost roll his eyes, change his mind and pull them up. The younger man's breath caught in his throat at the spectacular bruises spreading around his brother's torso and he winced.

"What did they use?"

Idle words again, no real intent behind them, just the need to keep his brother distracted as he pressed gently at his ribs, fingers as light as he could manage. Dean shrugged a little, hissed as Sam probed a tender spot.

"Pool cues. Half a stool, I t-think. Boots. Fists. The u-usual."

"_Half _a stool?"

"His face b-broke it first."

Sam smirked, worked arnica into the bruises, listened to his brother shiver and slowly, slowly relax as it worked its magic.

"We gonna have any problems?"

The pause was so long, he thought Dean might have fallen asleep.

"Nah. They ain' gonna call cops. Not when Christie'll tell Sheriff wha' they did."

"Christie?"

"Waitress. Cute. Big… y'know. _Assets._"

He nodded, sat back and watched as his brother lowered his shirts, still wincing, blinking groggily.

"Three questions."

"Man. 'M tire', Shammy."

He couldn't find a grin at the slurred protest.

"You know the drill, man. Three questions, then you can sleep."

Dean groaned, leant back in his chair and tipped his head back to squint at the ceiling.

"Dean Michael Winchester, born January 24th, 1979. Uh…"

Sam sighed, rubbed at one temple, paced a few steps towards the far wall, suddenly feeling claustrophobic.

"What's the last thing you remember?"

"Before the pool cues?"

"Yeah."

His brother was silent again, long enough to make him look up sharply, search the older man's face for trouble. Dean just stared at the ceiling, and even from halfway across the room Sam could tell he wasn't seeing it.

"_I wish I couldn't feel a damned thing."_

It was so quiet, he thought it was in his head then he felt all the blood drain to his feet as he watched his brother's lips shape the whisper. He stood there, rooted to the spot, remembering the warmth of the sun on his back jar against the ice running through his veins as he listened to his brother claw back control.

_So do I, Dean._

He hadn't said it, hadn't known _how _to say it, a thousand Hallmark platitudes springing to his lips only to be choked down. His fingers, locked around the bottle in his hand, so tight he wondered how the glass could still be in one piece and he made himself loosen them, one at a time with cold deliberation. The muscles in his arms twitched, ready to reach out, grip his brother's shoulders then the sound of Dean's bottle exploding against the concrete a dozen feet away froze him solid.

"Come on. Get some rest."

Sam didn't recognise his own voice, stood on the other side of the room as his brother rolled his shoulders forward with a soft groan. They hadn't talked in days, had just spoken idle words to distract themselves, each other but Dean had been right, back in Washington. There weren't words. There was no making it better. So he locked his knees and watched his brother stagger and weave his way to the nearest – Sam's – bed, folding onto it with a sigh and burying his face in the pillow.

One hand crept underneath, muscles working as it gripped the gun there, and Sam wondered when the gun he remembered under Dean's pillow became a knife.

His knees tried to buckle on the first step, joints grinding together with a dull ache and he blinked, realised the shadows had shifted, changed while he stood there, lost in the stillness of the room. Staggering, he made it to the chair, the plastic creaking and cracking as he dropped gracelessly into it.

He propped his elbows on the table, ground the palms of his hands into his eyes and listened to Dean's breathing, slow and steady, hitching once or twice as he tumbled down into deeper sleep.

_Don't dream. Not tonight._

He wasn't even sure who he was asking it for, except that he knew he wouldn't sleep, knew he couldn't stand another night of glass shattering and detonating as his brother leant against the Impala beside him, a million miles away and shutting down as they watched the beer drain down through the cracks in the road.

Stars sparked behind his eyes, bright and sore and beautifully, wonderfully blinding. He shivered as he sat up, restless twitches curling down through his legs and arms, making his feet bounce on the carpet, his fingers drum on the tabletop.

Sam flipped open the laptop, listened to it boot up softly in the dark, sheets and blankets rustling as his brother stirred, sighed and relaxed again with a soft murmur he couldn't make out, and didn't think he wanted to.

His lips twisted bitterly as he remembered wishing – _so _many times – he had earplugs when Dean's guard dropped enough for his dreams to surface. This wasn't the same, not at all; there was no smirk in that whisper, no warmth, no desire.

It was cold fear, nothing else and he didn't need to hear the words to recognise that anymore. He buried himself in the screen, losing himself in words again, letting time slip through his fingers.

"Sam?"

He blinked, came back to the motel room like a drowning man sucking in burning air, rubbed at gritty eyes and twisted in his chair.

"You okay?"

Loaded question. Dean stilled, sighed and lifted his head an inch.

"In m' jacke'. There's'a book. Bla' book."

Sam frowned, watched his brother for a moment as the older man let his head droop forward until his brow creased the pillow. He worked his way through the canvas pockets one by one until his fingers brushed a hard, flat surface and pulled it free. He looked at it, thumbed the edge of the pages, the thin elastic wrapped around and around the covers stretching, worn almost clear through in places.

He didn't recognise it.

"Yeah. Tha'sa one."

He wandered over to the bed, taking in the glassy stare peering up at him, fixed to the notebook in his hands, haunted and dark and knew his brother didn't know what he was saying, didn't realise he was letting Sam see something he didn't want seen.

"You sure you're up to this?"

Dean nodded, winced and reached out a shaking hand, two feet to the left of where Sam held the book. The younger man handed it over, frowned harder as his brother struggled up and over to sit against the headboard, cradling the book against his chest but Dean didn't open it, just watched him until he turned and made his way back to the chair.

He shifted the laptop around until he could see the bed in the reflection, feeling guilty and somehow voyeuristic as he watched his brother slip the elastic free and leaf slowly through the pages until he stopped, lips working in a silent recitation, one hand reaching out to the wobbly nightstand between the beds. He found a pen, eyes still fixed to the page, brought it back and wrote something, slowly and carefully, squinting a little, then went on, turning the pages and turning the pages.

Sam looked down at his hands as they rested on the keys, told them to type and watched as they worked automatically, calling up familiar sites he barely saw until a soft _thud _reached his ears. He looked up, saw his brother slouched down in the bed, the notebook resting open on his lap as he snuffled a little and started snoring quietly.

The younger man stared for a moment, then stood and walked over, tugging gently at Dean's ankles until he slid down in the bed with a sigh, the notebook slipping from his lax fingers to tumble to the carpet. Sam stooped, picked it up and felt the world shudder beneath him as he saw the names listed there. Pages of them.

'_I lost count of how many souls.'_

"God," he choked out softly, eyes flickering between his sleeping brother and the notebook he knew he never would have been allowed to see if Dean wasn't groggy and hurting and too messed up to remember to hide it. The world shook again as he caught names he recognised, scrawled in Dean's messy script.

_Jaime. Audrey. Joel. Hope. Wesley. Anna._

They were next to unfamiliar names, no order to them, scattered throughout the notebook. _Christie _was smudged, the scribble almost illegible and he wondered if his brother would even be able to read it in the morning.

Wondered if Dean ever read the names of the souls he'd saved, or if all he saw were the other names and the empty spaces beside them.

'_I got off that rack. God help me I got right off it and I started rippin' them apart. I lost count of how many souls. How I feel? This… inside me… I wish I couldn't feel a thing, Sammy. I wish I couldn't feel a damned thing.'_


End file.
